European Commission, in its report on Member States’ efforts during 2011 to achieve a sustainable balance between fishing capacity and fishing opportunities, published 18.2.2013.

“Imagine being an archer, taking shots at a target and bets on whether you will or will not hit it. There is no need to hit the bulls eye, simply the target. If you miss it, whether you miss to the right or the left is unimportant – you missed, so you lost the bet. Imagine now that your wife (or partner) – whom we shall assume you care about – is standing to the left of the target. You will (one hopes) now try and hit the target more to the right, and will accept an increased risk of missing to the right of the target, because if you miss to the left, the consequences will be horrendously worse. Asymmetric probabilities is what Sidney calls this.

MSY is the same. Fish a stock at a lower fishing mortality rate than that which would be expected to maintain that stock at MSY (FMSY) (note that this is a simplified definition of FMSY) and you will have much more fish in future, more stable catches over the years, and significantly higher profits. Fish at a higher rate and you risk decimating the stock, resulting in hugely reduced and variable profits. This leads to the ‘fast down, slow up’ approach in Alaska, where this truth has long been recognized.”

Tweet by Jerry Percy, a UK small scale fisherman, commenting on plans to compensate vessel owners who don’t want to fish under the new EU-Mauritania fisheries agreement.

Nils Torvalds

MEP Nils Torvalds (ALDE, Finland) addressing Andreas Mavroyiannis, Cyprus’ Deputy Minister for European Affairs, who had defended the Council’s position that catch date should not be mandatory consumer information on fresh fish. The debate took place in the European Parliament on 11 September, the day before the vote on Struan Stevenson’sreport on the Common Market Organisation of fisheries products.

> See all the videos from the debate. (Scroll to 19:00:02 > 20:32:38)

@seafishinfuture: at 2,500 amendments, it will take any person 7 days to read them all, if you take 1 1/2 mins on average to read them

Tweets by Saskia Richartz, @seafishinfuture, 27 June, referring to the more than 2000 amendments that MEPs have written for Ulrike Rodust’s report on the basic regulation of the CFP reform.

Commission official Joost Pardekooper, commenting on a question by Chris Davies about what would happen if the European Parliament were to delay the prolongation of the derogation for the 12 nautical mile zone.

There is a derogation for the 12 nautical mile zone of Member States (territorial waters) from the general equal access rule for Union fishing vessels to Union waters and resources, which authorizes Member States to restrict access to certain vessels in that zone.

The derogation is in place from 1 January 2003 to 31 December 2012. The continuation of the 12 nautical mile access regime is foreseen in Article 6(2) of the proposal for the new basic regulation in the CFP reform.

Since it seems unlikely that the European Parliament and the Council will adopt the new CFP before 1 January 2013, the Commission has proposed a regulation to prolong the derogation until the new CFP is in place

This extension of the access regime is intended to be adopted before the end of 2012. If, for some reason, the extension would not be adopted, it would indeed “be quite a shock to the member states”.

As the 12 mile zone regulation was discussed at the meeting with the European Parliament’s fisheries committee 21 June 2012, some MEPs suggested that a delay had the possibility to become an “atomic weapon” in the deadlock between the Parliament and Council on the adoption of multiannual management plans.

The Commission said they did not want comment on tactics between the Council and Parliament.

Alain Cadec, MEP (EPP), felt he had heard many of the arguments from other MEPs before, as the Fisheries Committee in the European Parliament discussed Ulrike Rodust’s (S&D) draft report on the basic regulation in the CFP reform, 21 May 2012.

María José Cornax, fisheries campaigner at Oceana, at a seminar 11 April about the implementation of the ecosystem-based approach.

Download the speakers’ presentations from the event:
Michel J Kaiser
Marco Greco
Fabio Fiorentino

MEP Pat the Cope Gallagher, during the debate in the European Parliament, 13 February 2012, on a resolution on a multi-annual plan for Atlantic horse mackerel.

There is currently a deadlock among Member States over the long-term management plans and the plan for the western stock of Atlantic horse mackerel has been blocked in the Council since November 2010.

Mette Gjerskov, Danish Minister for Food, Agriculture and Fisheries, speaking in the European Parliament’s Fisheries Committee on 25 January 2012, in reply to MEPs Dolores García Hierro and Antolín Sánchez Presedo who urged the Minister to push for a new protocol to the EU-Morocco Fisheries Agreement.